According to its renaissance man of an author, MC and software engineer,
Rashenal, "Human Block" is quite an ambitious concept album. Indeed,
according to the MC, this self-titled album by the Human Block project,
comprised of Rashenal and producer and fellow Wild Life Crew member Jelts,
is a concept album "exploring the most basic forms of human connection and
how human lives are shaped around these connections." I would normally be
fascinated by such sociological inquiries. The problem though, is that
Rashenal is not a good rapper.

Rashenal lacks skills as an MC for two main reasons: his delivery and his
rhyme patterns. Rashenal's voice is monotone and anonymous. Neither of these
traits is independently damning. Guru and Nas could each be accused of
monotony, but it s a monotony that stems from either swagger or weariness.
Rashenal's monotony, on the other hand, is a product of the fact that he
isn't an adept enough MC to be both expressive and on-beat.

Anonymity is also not necessarily a bad thing. Dose One, on his works with
13 & God and Subtle, allows his hip-hop chants and growls to fade into the
ether. But Dose One's approach stems from humility, the feeling that he is a
small part of a whole project. Rashenal, on the other hand, is wholly
featured on "Human Block" but remains anonymous because he does nothing to
create his own voice.

At the end of the day, Rashenal's delivery suffers because he does not have
a good grasp on rhythm. Instead of riding the beat, either fluidly or
expressively, he mechanically traces each track's percussion, stretching his
syllables to ensure that he says the right words at the right times. His
breath control is wholly adequate, and on "You Say This" he does show some
ability to vary his pace, but his style lacks character and confidence. He
needs an appointment with Doctor Weezy, or something. "Disabled Culture" is
the strongest track on the record, as our featured rapper alternates between
labored spoken word, sing-songy flow, and distorted fast rap. Still, even
this track, features particularly un-inventive talk-singing which disrupts
an intriguingly minimalist beat.

Our MC's mechanical flow is magnified by his mechanical writing style. With,
of course, some exceptions, Rashe tends to write in either an "AA/BB" or
"AB/AB" structure, with little variation or internal rhyme. As a result, the
tracks are largely vocally indistinguishable from one another.

From the rappers take on his own album, as quoted above, it seems that, in
the mind of the artist, the content of the lyrics themselves is "Human
Block"'s redemption. Lazy as this may sound, I never got that far. Don't get
me wrong. I listened to the record many times all the way through, but I
never found myself caring much what this Tempe Arizon b-boy had to say. His
delivery never captivated me enough to spark curiosity about his message. I
am not willing to make some grandiose statement about form over substance or
vis-a-versa, but what I will say is that, sometimes, when either form or
substance is sufficiently lacking, the other one doesn't much matter.

What is particularly a shame about the lack of vocal form, is that the
production is actually pretty decent. Jelts is not necessarily an innovator,
but he is certainly able to lay down consistently subtle and melancholy
beats, interspersed with space-age dissonance and satisfyingly familiar
samples. "I Am" features adeptly mixed rapid fire strings and a catchy, sped
up vocal sample. Indeed, through "Human Block," Jelts has a knack for
choosing samples and altering them in a way which at once preserves the
appeal of the originals but also fits them to the track. It is tempting to
say, for example, that Jelts sticks too closely to Cake's original riff on
"Four Letter Word," but such a criticism would prioritize sheer originality
over aesthetic sensibility, which seems to define pretension. While his
drums are an overly stock boom-bap, which lack variety from track to track,
Jelts' melodies and samples effectively garner intrigue at the top if each
track. The rapping itself, however, consistently defeats Jelts' efforts.